Student protests erupt at Tiananmen Square, April 21, 1989

Six days after the death of Hu Yaobang, the deposed reform-minded leader of the Chinese Communist Party, some 100,000 students gathered on this day in 1989 at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to commemorate Hu and voice their discontent with China’s authoritarian government.

The next day, Chinese leaders held a brief memorial service for Hu in the Great Hall of the People, which adjoins the square. Student representatives carried a petition to the steps of the Great Hall, demanding to meet with Premier Li Peng. The government rebuffed them, triggering a general boycott of Chinese universities across the country.

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The students’ goals included dealing with corruption within the Communist Party hierarchy, democratic reforms and freedom of speech, including the press. Ignoring government warnings that mass demonstrations would be suppressed, with violence if need be, students from more than 40 universities marched on the square.

They were joined by workers, intellectuals and civil servants; by mid-May more than a million people filled the square, where Mao Zedong, the founder of Communist Revolution, had proclaimed the formation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. For a time, Tiananmen Square become a liberation-minded festive site in the heart of the Chinese capital.

Tolerance proved short-lived; on May 20, the government declared martial law in Beijing. Troops and tanks were called in to disperse the dissidents. However, large numbers of students and citizens blocked the army’s advance, and by May 23 government forces had pulled back to the capital’s outskirts.

On June 3, with negotiations to end the protests stalled and calls for democratic reforms escalating, the troops received orders from the Chinese leadership to reclaim the square. In what became known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, troops with assault rifles and tanks fired at the demonstrators trying to block the military's advance toward the square, resulting, according to some sources, in about 10,000 deaths and wholesale arrests.

By the end of the next day, the troops had forcibly cleared the square and nearby streets. In the weeks after the government crackdown, dissidents were executed and communist hard-liners took firm control of the party.

Although President George H.W. Bush had sought to improve relations with China, the violent crackdown of the student protests led his administration to ban weapons sales to China. (Bush had spent two years in Beijing after President Gerald Ford had named him to serve as chief of the U.S. Liaison Office there.)

Other nations also imposed sanctions. By July 1989, the world’s seven leading democracies had halted $10 billion in foreign aid, including significant loans, as well as $780 million from the World Bank. These coordinated actions hurt the Chinese economy, leading to a sharp decline in international investment, fewer tourists and a lower credit rating.

However, by late 1990, as China began to release some imprisoned dissidents, international trade had rebounded, and it remains vibrant to this day.